A stubbornly persistent illusion
by awkwardacity
Summary: When the supernatural war of Beacon Hills ends the McCall pack, it's last surviving members make a drastic move to fix it, sacrificing everything for the slimmest of chances. Someone should really have taught Stiles the risks of magic during an eclipse. [Time Travel AU] 9/15 - Countdown to Season Six


On the last day of the war, Stiles' world burns.

He should've know it would happen, he thinks, as he lies in the ashen remains of the rebuilt Hale House. Everything in Beacon Hills ends in fire.

Stiles doesn't know how long he's been lying there. His muscles scream from disuse when goes to sit up, and the wind that hits him the moment he does seems to go straight through him. His stomach aches, his limbs tremble, and the world slants dangerously as he blinks at the glaring light of the winter sun above.

The only reason he's still alive is probably his magic.

He checks his phone: it's been two days since the fire broke out. There's nothing but an empty, strange detachment as he thinks over what that means. It's been two days since the fire, yet he can still see glowing embers in the charred remains around him. Ash still swirls through the air, choking him every time he breathes too deeply. Natural fires don't burn that long. His hands clench into fists so hard he can feel his nails split the skin.

If he had been here, maybe he could have stopped it. Instead he was thousands of miles away with Lydia, searching for that slim chance of hope - the _one thing_ that might have stopped the fighting.

They returned the moment they felt the first pack bond snap and fizzle into nothing, salvation in hand, but by then it was too late. The fire was already out of control, and no amount of magic could have saved their friends - their pack. By the time he swept the mountain ash circle away, all that remained of their bonds was each other.

Lydia barely had time to warn him before she was screaming and screaming and screaming and _dying_.

He almost wishes he didn't have enough time to throw up a shield between them.

He shudders, his whole body shaking like a leaf as a cold breeze blows through the clearing, kicking up another flurry of ash. He imagines, for a moment, simply letting the wind take him, too. Just letting himself, and everything else, go, and seeing where he ends up - far away from the ruins and memories and echoes. He _could_ do it. It's not like there's anything left for him here.

He grips his head in between his hands, pressing his fingers hard into his temples, the heels of his palms into his closed eyes until strange patterns dance in his vision. The pain grounds him. He can't leave - yet. There are too many many loose ends for him to tie up. And as the last remains member of the McCall pack - as their emissary, too - he owes his friends the task of overseeing them, even in death.

He doesn't miss the irony that his pack burned under a full wolf moon, nor the coincidence that the Hales did too.

With shaking legs he walks through the ruins - past vaporised ashes and charcoaled bones and burned flesh, trying not to think about which parts belong to which people. Down that road lies insanity and overwhelming grief, and Stiles can't - he won't think about any of that. He can't think of how Scott must have tried to save everyone trapped inside but himself; how Cora, who only recently overcame her fear of fire, and Peter must have felt as they burned alive for the second time; how Laura - Derek and Braeden's eight-months-old daughter - must have screamed...

Stiles groans, his fists curling in even more. Blood drips in tiny rivulets onto the leaf-strewn ground beneath him.

He passes through where the door used to be - now no more than a charred husk of wood - and walks over to Lydia. She lies where she fell, blood still fresh and wet, running in tracks from her eyes and nose and ears even though it's been two days, her eyes glazed and open in terror.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. Not just to the banshee before him, but to all of them. He should've known. He should've guessed that the ceasefire Scott negotiated wouldn't last - it was his _job_ to know. Instead he allowed Scott to convince him that it would be okay to leave, that the lead in England was important enough to warrant his attention.

Of course, Scott was right, but it still does nothing to change the fact that he's dead.

He reaches down to close Lydia's eyes, and that's when he finally notices the slight shift of her chest. His hands move to her neck instead, pressing two fingers against her pulse point-

Stiles' heart almost stops. _She's alive_.

* * *

Everyone in Beacon Hills knows about the supernatural.

It's hard not to, considering everything that's happened in the last few years. Stiles thinks the real clincher was back when the Beast was rampaging everywhere, and Scott revealed himself to everyone in the library. It was hard to deny it once it was happening before their eyes (though he also knows some people certainly tried).

Things changed once everyone accepted the supernatural as part of their lives. Before it had been something most thought about, but never spoke of out loud for fear of being labelled as crazy. After the Beast, it became something of a normal conversation topic. ( _"Can anyone tell me why Scott and Malia are late for class? Stiles?" "Oh, they're just combing the woods looking for the witches who crossed the border last week, Miss." "Ah, of course."_ )

Everyone in Beacon Hills knew that if Scott McCall said to do something, you just did it - because he was the alpha, and not doing so might get you killed. They knew that you didn't question the sight of Corey randomly appearing in the halls, because he was a chimera and that was a perfectly normal thing for him to do. That though the Beacon County Sheriff's Department were the law, the McCall pack were the real protectors of Beacon Hills.

Everyone knew the day Lydia Martin stood in the school courtyard and screamed so loudly the entire town heard, that everything was about to change.

No one freaks out when Stiles materialises in the middle of Beacon Memorial's emergency room, though he does startle the nurse at the desk slightly. They're more concerned with the catatonic girl in his arms me whose blood drips onto the white floor with every passing second.

Doctors swarm around him, pulling Lydia's limp body from his grasp and loading her onto a hospital bed. There's a nurse he doesn't recognise asking him questions - he thought he knew all of the nurses by now, he thinks absently - but he barely heard her. If Lydia dies, that's another death on his conscience. He should have checked her when she stopped screaming, but she was _so still_...

"Stiles!" Someone clicks their fingers under his nose, and he snaps out of his thoughts.

Melissa stands in front of him. Her face is drawn, her shoulders hunched, and she looks almost as broken as Stiles feels, but he can see the resilience in her as she looks him fiercely in the eyes, determined to stay awake as long as she's needed.

She probably doesn't know about the fire. No one does, he realises - Scott had ordered everyone to stay out of the preserve for their own safety. It was ground zero in the war, after all.

"Stiles, tell me what happened."

There's a waver in her voice that tells him she might already have guessed, and for a moment his mouth refuses to work. In any other situation in might be funny; the great blabbermouth Stiles Stilinski, finally reduced to silence.

But it's not funny. He doubts anything will be funny for a long time.

"There..." his voice breaks. "There was a fire. Lydia screamed."

They're walking with Lydia's bed, as the doctors check her over, nodding as they take in his information like it's totally normal. It is normal for Beacon Hills.

"How many people did she scream for?" someone asks. Maybe Melissa, maybe not.

"I don't know." It comes out as a whisper, and those not still pawing over Lydia's body turn to look at him. They can probably guess what he's about to say, he can see it in the dawning horror in their eyes because it's not possible, it can't be possible, _shouldn't_ be possible, but it is.

"Everyone," he chokes out. "She screamed for everyone. All of them. They're all dead."

To their credit, none of the doctors stop. They keep going, keep trying to save Lydia, even as they try to process their shock. Because everyone has some sort of connection to the pack. Everyone knows who they are, how many they are- were. How many they were.

Suddenly they're at the doors the the ER, and Stiles isn't allowed any further. He watches as Lydia is carted away, leaving him and Melissa on the other side. He can see the other people in the waiting room staring at him with stunned expressions, because of course they overheard him. He can't bear to watch as Melissa mouth Scott's name over and over, unable to quite get the words out. She falls, her legs giving way, hunching in on herself and shaking as she tries to process the bomb he's just dropped on them all.

It reminds him of when they were trying to catch the Benefactor and Kira stopped Scott's heart. He remembers how Melissa's screams echoed through the hospital halls, how all of them had stood mournfully over their alpha's body, reassured only by the fact that in forty-five minutes he would be alive again.

There's no reassurance this time. All Stiles can do is slide into one of the waiting room chairs beside his best friend's mother before his weakened limbs can force him to join her on the floor, and wait. Wait for someone to tell the sheriff's department, wait for the media to grab hold of the tragedy and tell the rest of the town, wait to discover if he truly is the last of the McCall pack, or if maybe Lydia will join him in such an awful fate.

He almost wishes she won't make it. Almost.

Someone taps him on the shoulder, and he turns slowly and carefully to see Sydney sitting beside him. There are tears in her eyes (he hasn't cried yet, he realises. Maybe there's something wrong with him.) and he remembers that she is - was - quite close to Hayden, and Lydia.

"What happens now?" she asks in a soft whisper as if speaking any louder might raise the dead, though it's gone so quiet in the waiting room that it sounds more like a shout. "Are they going to come after us?"

"No." His answer is certain. This was a supernatural war, after all, and the other side were only really interested in the pack. In the source of magic that made Beacon Hills the most powerful territory in the whole of America. The humans who are dead are no more than collateral damage, either killed in the crossfire or to send some sick sort of message.

"They won't come after anyone." he says, louder this time.

"How can you be sure?"

"They can't kill anyone when they're all dead, too."

He speaks coldly, emotionlessly, like he's just stated that two plus two equals four, and it's enough to scare Sydney away.

It scares him too. He returned to the Hale House in flames for the second time in less than ten years - to the screams and howls of his friends and family, and it was almost instinct, he thinks, what happened in the following hour.

They burned his pack alive, so he returned the favour.

Stiles doesn't regret it.

* * *

Lydia is going to make it.

He's slumped, half-asleep, in the same chair as before when one of the nurses comes out to tell him that she's stable and sedated. Since her scream had no direction - it was too sudden, too large, for Lydia to control - Lydia apparently attempted to turn it in on herself. A scream that large should have reached the town and killed a lot of people; and as such she shattered quite a few of the bones in her body. She's paralysed from the waist down, and will never walk again - but with any luck she might wake up. One day. The nurse rambles on about how the last time Lydia was comatose she stayed under for weeks, but who knows how her being a banshee could affect it-

Stiles ignores her. Lydia's _alive_. That's more than he ever expected.

He breathes a heavy sigh of relief, pulling himself out of the chair with a groan. The places he's slept in the last few days will probably end up doing permanent damage to his body.

Melissa is no longer curled up on the floor beside him. He guesses she was sent home whilst he was dozing, along with certain other people, like Liam's step-father, to process and grieve.

He sits in Lydia's room alone. He doesn't even remember where her dad is any more, and her mother keeps ignoring his calls. Which, considering the fight Lydia and her mom had before she left with him for England, is a little understandable.

He keeps his hand wrapped around the banshee's, taking comfort in the steady pulse he finds at her wrist. He tries to siphon her pain like the wolves used to - it's one of the few abilities he picked up from the nogitsune's possession, and enhanced by his magic he can usually pull it off quite well - but in his weakened state his powers are a poor imitation and barely seem to do anything.

After a moment of hesitation, Stiles climbs up onto the bed and lies down beside his pack-mate. The contact grounds him, and he can feel the single live pack bond inside his chest spark contentedly; lonely. He latches onto that feeling, that light and happiness, and holds it close to him. He is a mess of broken bonds, charred and aching inside him, desperately searching to connect to other halves which will never be able complete them again. But he has this. He has her, and she has him.

He feels the answering spark from Lydia's end of the connection, can hear how her laboured breathing begins to ease. For the moment, this is all he needs.

He watches the news on the television in the corner of the room muted. By now someone has let out the secret. The war is over. The enemy is dead and everyone is safe for now; but their protectors are dead, too. A Pyrrhic victory.

He has to turn away when the cameras zoom in on the police cars rushing into the preserve. There's a police cordon stopping the press from getting further than the entrance to the woods, and he's glad. He doesn't want to watch the police working with some new, inexperienced sheriff replacing his father. He doesn't want to see the moment they find the scorched clearing to the north and put the dots together about what he did.

Lydia's hand tightens around his, and his attention snaps back to her. She is his bright light in the dark - always has been, he supposes. Neither of them is human, not really, but they're close enough that they stuck together to survive in a world of wolves. He doesn't love her the way he thought he did, but he _does_ love her. He feels awful for thinking it, but out of all the people who could have survived he's glad it's her.

"Stiles..." Lydia's voice is so much of a whisper that it's more like a breath, barely audible.

"I'm here," he reassures her, squeezing her hand and tucking his head into her shoulder. There are no external wounds now, but he rests against her gently, as if she is a china doll he might break. He feels the flickering smile on her lips against his neck, which quickly turns into a grimace.

"Stiles..." she breathes again, and he goes to move, thinking he's hurting her, but she pulls him back with a weak tug of her arm.

"Yeah?"

"They're all - _gone_."

Lydia sobs, and something inside Stiles snaps. Maybe it's time, or exhaustion, or simply hearing someone else admit it out loud. It doesn't matter. His eyes are hot with tears, blurring his vision and burning his face as they spill over. Lydia makes a pained whine, a sound so heart-wrenchingly broken and animal it hurts to hear. He answers her in kind, and together they mourn their pack, because despite not beings wolves in body, it's fair to say they are in spirit. This is how wolves communicate their pain to each other; somewhere along the line he realises they're howling.

If anyone in Beacon Hills didn't know what happened, they sure do now.

Lydia subsides into a coughing fit, her hand coming away from her mouth bloody. Stiles leaps up to grab her a cup of water. She drinks it greedily, and Stiles wishes he was better at healing magic. The most he's been able to do is fix bones and cuts - and even that takes an immense amount of concentration and power. What's wrong with Lydia is internal, and he has no idea how to make it right. He feels useless. All he can do is hold her hand tightly as she grits her teeth in pain.

"Stiles," she says again. Her voice is slightly clearer now. Her hand shakes as she points at her bag, lying on the bedside table.

He doesn't understand what she's looking for as he roots through, until he finds the crumpled yellowing page hidden between her algebra textbook and her diary.

"Lyds," his eyes flicker between the page and the banshee.

"Yes, Stiles," she gives him as much of a glare as she can manage. "I stole...it, from the archives. No need to look so...surprised."

"Why?"

"Does it matter?"

"I suppose not." He looks over the contents of the page. At first, he can't help the surge of hope that rises up inside him. It's quickly quelled as he reads through the ingredients of the spell and realises exactly what Lydia wants him to do.

"You have to do it," Lydia insist, correctly judging his expression.

"You can't be serious. You think I can...?"

"There's no other choice. Stiles...I can't live like this. I _won't_ live like this. You understand? This is the _only_ way."

"The amount of power it would take alone, Lydia. The likelihood of me succeeding is less than zero."

"If it fails, you have my full permission to do whatever drastic thing I know you're already planning."

"If it fails, I won't need your permission, Lydia," he laughs bitterly.

"So you'll try it?"

"It's not like I have much choice, is it?"

"Of course you have a choice." She reaches out and takes hold of his hand again. "I wouldn't ask you to to do it unless I was sure it was the very last resort."

"I know."

He supposes, now that all of their pack is dead, that the alpha power has probably passed to him. He can feel the responsibility weighing on his shoulders, even with just one beta - if Lydia can be called that - and he doesn't understand how Scott managed it with a pack as large and eclectic as theirs.

But he's responsible for their pack now whether he likes it or not, and he's damn well going to do his best to fix it.

* * *

He stays long enough to oversee their burials.

Then he leaves Beacon Hills, and he doesn't look back.

* * *

When he finally returns home, almost ten months have passed.

Not much has changed in Beacon Hills. Now that there are no supernatural murders occurring every five second, there is less of a sense of overwhelming fear blanketing the town, but other than that it seems the same. Autumn has coated the streets in red and gold, and a flicker of nostalgia tries to spark inside him, until he pushes it brutally down.

He stops off at a corner store and buys a newspaper, hiding his face in the shadow of his hoodie. He flicks through it briefly - just to check. It seems that no supernatural wants to make a move on territory so cursed by death and tragedy.

The only thing of note is a small column article updating the town on the progress of the building of the McCall memorial. Stiles closes the paper quickly when he sees that.

He's spent ten months immersing himself in all the magic he can find, pushing himself further than he ever thought possible, with only one goal in mind. It's strange, to him, being back. He half expects his phone to start ringing suddenly - Scott calling him to complain about their econ homework, or beg him to come over and play video games, or summon him to a pack meeting because _another_ psychotic supernatural threat is terrorising the town.

His phone doesn't ring, of course, because Scott is dead. And he lost his phone three months ago to a particularly vicious dolphin in the Amazon river.

He teleports to the hospital from an alley behind the corner store. He doesn't need the unwanted attention his return will undoubtedly bring if anyone discovers it.

Lydia is a permanent resident of the hospital, he discovers from the nurse at the front desk. She stares at him unabashedly in a kind of awe that makes him feel uncomfortable, so the moment he gets the room number from her he dematerialises on the spot.

Room 217 has two occupants when he arrives. The first is Lydia, asleep in her hospital bed. Despite the drawn paleness of her skin, and the worrying thinness of her limbs, the moment he sees her a flood of relief washes over him. He feels the pack bond spark brightly in her presence, and the content warmth he receives in return from her end. He's missed her so much more than he's allowed himself to feel.

The other person in the room is Natalie Martin, and his lips curl involuntarily at the sight of her. He pushes down the resentment - because in the end Lydia's mother was right: the supernatural was dangerous - deadly - and it got people hurt and killed. It got Lydia hurt, and it will get her killed.

He still doesn't have to like Natalie, or the way she went about trying to prove her point.

She turns as he shifts slightly, unsure of whether to make his presence known, and he can see in her eyes that his dislike of her is equally reciprocated. "Stiles," she greets him with a flat, unemotional tone.

"Ms Martin."

"What are you doing here?"

"Visiting Lydia."

"And where have you been the last ten months?"

"Doing something she asked me to."

Natalie snorts in disbelief. But nevertheless stands up from her place beside her daughter. "You have five minutes."

It's more than he expected of her, so he nods at her gratefully as she leaves the room, waiting until her footsteps fade from his hearing before daring to move to take her place.

"Hey, Lydia." He curls his hand inside hers, just like he did so long ago, and her fingers clench around his immediately. Her eyes fly open, latching onto him and drinking in the sight of him with hungry eyes.

"Stiles!"

Her voice is far stronger than before. Her eyes have regained at least a small amount of the spark they were lacking the last time he saw her, and he barely manages a small smile before she's pushing herself up to throw her arms around his neck. He hugs her back as hard as he can, memorising her scent filling his nose, and the feel of her arms around him.

He tries to imagine what the past months have been like for her. Whilst he's had so much to distract him, she's been stuck in this bed, paralysed from the waist down and slipping in and out of comas with nothing to do but think. He thinks this must have been what is was like for Laura, returning home to her uncle after six years. Only she left Peter without his consent, and he went insane.

"How've you been?" Stiles asks, gently laying her back onto the bed.

She rolls her eyes, motioning slightly with her free hand to the tubes in her arms. "It's been _great_. Half of the time I'm too drugged up on pain mess for anything to mean anything, because after my last ' _relapse_ ' they had to replace all the windows on this floor. I've watched so many tv shows. _And_ I finally watch Star Wars - it's better than I expected."

"I _told_ you," he grins at her, trying to remember the last time he did so. The movement feels strange on his face.

She flashes him a small smile in return, but it quickly flickers out. "You look so different," she murmurs. She reaches forwards, running a hand through his wild, matted hair. Her fingers move down to trace one of the black sigils tattooed on his neck, one of the runes he carved into his an arm with an athame, the various scars and callouses he's gained on his hands. "Your aura is really strong. Where've you even been?'

"Well, that's a long story. How much time have you got?"

Lydia arches a perfect eyebrow - even dying in a hospital she looks like a goddess. "Was that a _joke_ , Stilinski?"

He shrugs, a teasing grin finding its way onto his face. It feels so good to laugh and joke with her again, and he desperately doesn't want to lose this. "I've been everywhere. Europe, Asia, South America, Australia. I even went to Antarctica briefly."

"Really? I wish I could've come."

"You would've loved it," he admits wistfully. "Niagara Falls is breath-taking, but not very fun to fall over. Standing on the top of Kilimanjaro naked is really freaking cold, unless you have this really advanced heating spell which takes, like, a week to learn. I swear to god I almost lost my fingers to frostbite. And I love my fingers, so that was nearly a disaster."

Lydia's laughing, and the whole room seems to light up with the sound. They're both avoiding the topic they really need to talk about, he knows, but he doesn't care. His last remaining pack bond is like a roaring fire in his chest after months of distance and darkness.

"Did you do it?" Lydia's the first to crack, and she speaks in a whisper as if they might be overheard.

Stiles hefts his bag onto the bed, the various jars and boxes within clattering together as he does so. He hands Lydia the crumpled page she tore from a book in the archive so long ago, and she peruses the objects in his bag, checking them off the list. She mouths the name of each ingredient as she does so, and he can't help but watch her in reverence.

They both know Natalie will be back any minute, but they can't afford to rush any of their preparations before they make their first move. Even a hair's stray from the spell's instructions could disastrously backfire and kill everyone in Beacon Hills.

"This might actually work," Lydia breathes in awe.

"I've spent ten months doing some pretty crazy shit," Stiles mutters as he collects everything back into the bag, "so it better. You ready?"

He won't lie to himself - he wants her to say no. But in truth, both of them have been more than mentally prepared for this since they first agreed to it. She nods determinedly, eyes fiery and lips pressed tightly together.

He summons a wheelchair from the supply room and helps her shift carefully into it. She watches him in fascination as he chants around her bed, as the air shimmers until a perfectly lifelike replica of her is lying where she was only minutes ago. The glamour will fade in a day at most, he guesses, but they only need a few hours to carry out their plan.

"Where to first?" he asks her. This is, after all, the first time she'll have left the hospital ground in ten months, and before they do anything drastic he wants to make sure they both have their affairs in order.

Just in case.

"My wardrobe," Lydia says decidedly, and when he looks at her sceptically she lets out an indignant splutter. "I don't know about you, but if we end up dead I am not having a _hospital gown_ as my last outfit."

"Fair enough," he shrugs. "I can imagine how grumpy a ghost you would be if that was all you had to wear for eternity."

She hits him playfully on the arm. "Just do it."

* * *

"You've gotten better at that," Lydia remarks as he wheels her up the drive towards the animal clinic, where the last ingredient for the spell resides. She changed out of the hospital gown - after spending an hour laughing at him from her bed as he rooted through her many, _many_ drawers of clothes for her - and now wears a loose top covered in flowers - _"Are those wolfsbane flowers?!"_ \- and jeans. He refused to let her try on fifty different pairs of high heels in front of him when _she can't even walk_ , so she wears white converse.

She's spent the last ten minutes thanking him like he's the messiah, so he counts the torture as a necessary evil.

"What do you mean?"

"Teleporting. You've gotten much better at it. I don't feel I'm about to throw up this time."

"I've gotten better at everything," he teases, and she rolls her eyes at him so hard it looks like her irises disappear right out of her head.

The animal clinic's door is locked, but with a wave of Stiles' hand it clicks open. Just before he steps through the threshold he reels his aura in, wrapping it so tightly inside himself that he's hit momentarily by a wave of dizziness at the loss of it.

Deaton is waiting for them as if he knew they were coming - which he did. Stiles always used to wonder how he knew, before, but now he knows it's because of the wards Stiles very purposefully tripped on their way up the path. Oh, he could easily have slipped past them undetected, but scaring the veterinarian out of his wits isn't the angle Stiles is going for.

Yet.

"Stiles," Deaton greets, in that annoyingly passive tone that used to infuriate him to no end. "I was of the belief that you had left Beacon Hills for good."

"And I was of the belief that it was none of your business." He can't help the sharp edge in his tone as he talks to the druid. Despite Stiles being the definitive emissary of the McCall pack, Deaton had an obnoxious habit of attempting to worm his way in repeatedly, arguing and contradicting anything Stiles said. And of all the people he has left to hate in the world, Deaton is dangerously high on that list.

"True," Deaton concedes. "Lydia, it's good to see you out and about. Did the hospital decide to release you after all?"

"No, but Stiles thought it would be good for me to get some fresh air whilst he was in town, especially after such a long time inside." Her tone is sickly sweet, and Stiles almost feels sorry for Deaton. He can't help but notice how the vet is remaining on the other side of the desk, the rowan barrier firmly closed between them as if it could stop Stiles if he decided to go for him.

"Of course. So what can I do for you both?"

"We're trying to do a spell," Stiles says, handing him his bag. "But we're missingb an ingredient, and we know we can find it here."

"I don't know of any ingredients here that you can't find anywhere else, but I'll see what I can do. What is it you're looking for exactly?"

Deaton is distracted looking through the bag, and Stiles grips the back of Lydia's wheelchair with one hand, his fingers drumming against it, waiting for the older man to understand. It's like watching a young child struggle with a math equation, slowly adding the numbers together. It's there in his face, the moment he realises, in his wide eyes and slack jaw, in the panic etched in his features when he turns to protest to them-

But whatever Deaton was planning to say, Stiles and Lydia will never know, because with a simple flick of his hand Stiles sends the druid flying into the wall. His head collides with the bricks with a sickening thud, and he drops to the floor unconscious.

"That's all of them," Lydia says in a coldly level tone. "Where next?"

* * *

Where next is the nemeton. The clearing hums with an immense power that, the last time he was here, Stiles was unable to sense. Now it flows through him, sparking like fire in his veins as it calls out to him. He's connected to the tree in a way most magic users could only dream of, through his sacrifice, and it should increase the chances of the spell actually working exponentially.

They work by the light of the ever-rising full moon. Stiles helps Lydia out of her wheelchair and onto the tree stump. Whilst he lays Deaton down beside her, he gives Lydia the ingredients and leaves her to mix them together. The ropes he ties the vet down with are enchanted, and unbreakable, but he still ties them tight enough to hurt. He's planned for every contingency - there's no way the spell casting itself can go wrong. All of their worries lie in the amount of power it takes to do something so huge.

The timing has to be perfect.

Deaton begins to groan and shift, so Stiles hurries over to where Lydia is adding strands of her hair to the bowl. She pours the last of the staurolite dust into the mix, and pushes the bowl towards him. "Now all it needs is your blood," she says. He notices the tremor in her hands as she hands him his athame. He can't blame her, and he takes a moment to grip her hands before open his own and letting the scarlet beads drip into the bowl. Then, with a click of his fingers, the mixture bursts into blue flames - they remind him of Malia's eyes, Stiles thinks absently - and the two of them watch, mesmerised, until all that remains is a mixture of ash.

He's wasting precious seconds, but before he begins the spell, Stiles can't help but crouch down to throw his arms around Lydia. He won't cry, he refuses to, but he clings to her as tightly as he can and ignores the hot pricking in his eyes. She squeezes back with as much strength as she can muster.

"I believe in you," she says. "You'll fix everything."

He gives her a hesitant smile, and is about to answer her when the clearing goes dark. Above them is the full hunter's moon in a penumbral lunar eclipse, and Stiles knows he has to hurry. The eclipse won't last long, and if he doesn't complete the ritual in the time span then he'll have to wait another six months to try again.

He grabs the bowl, beginning to sprinkle the ashes in a circle around the nemeton. "I come before the gods to ask them to lend me their power."

"Stiles?" Deaton mutters. "What are you doing?"

"Shut up," Lydia hisses beside him, fixing him with a glare so piercing even Stiles shivers.

"I give myself over to you, and willingly accept any price or consequence you deem necessary in return for your favour."

"Stiles, you can't do this." Deaton is struggling against the ropes - in vain, of course.

"Goddess Hecate, I ask that you lend me your power, so that I may perform the magic I wish to accomplish."

"You're going to kill yourself, Stiles! No one has enough power to do what you're attempting."

Lydia snorts softly. "Do you think we don't know that?"

That shuts him up.

"Goddess Nemesis, I ask that you lend me your power, so that I may avenge my fallen family." He glares accusingly at Deaton as he says this, and hears the sharp gasp from both the vet and Lydia.

"Your eyes..." the banshee breathes.

His eyes are burning a fire-like orange. They used to turn gold when he did magic, before, but the alpha power running alongside it now mixes the colour. When he first realised he was startled, even slightly terrified, but now it makes him feel strong. He takes particular satisfaction from the terror in Deaton's eyes as he begins to realise how powerful Stiles has really become.

"Titan Cronus, I ask that you lend me your power, so that I may return to a time already gone. Goddess Shai, I ask that you lend me your power, so that I may be able to change fate and destiny."

Stiles steps towards Deaton, his eyes wild and manic. The air around him crackles and fizzes with energy. His hair stands on end, his body shaking with the power coursing through it, even as he feels the draining and tugging of the magic pulling at him, tearing him apart from the inside.

"God Hades, I ask that you accept this soul as small payment for those you shall lose through my actions. He is guilty of murder and betrayal, and thus should be deemed guilty in the eyes of the gods."

He lifts his baseball bat, and before Deaton can even cry out the metal meets skin. The man stops struggling almost immediately, and Stiles hastens to finish the job, pushing down the nausea bubbling inside him; a knife to the throat, then a garrote, and the druid is dead. His blood soaks the nemeton, seeping into the cracks and dripping down onto the roots.

Stiles trembles, pointedly ignoring the blood coating his hands. He could have chosen almost anyone to fill the sacrifice - all that was needed was a 'guilty soul' - but Deaton's hand in all the tragedies of Beacon Hills should strengthen the ritual all the more. To the vet's credit, he didn't even try to deny it.

He turns to Lydia. She's sat on top of the nemeton, the blood pooling around her, soaking her jeans. She's shaking, looking just about ready to scream, but she holds it in. Their eyes meet, and he sees a single tear work its way down her face.

They've both known this moment was coming. They've had ten months to come to terms with it, but it doesn't make it any easier.

"Goddesses Astraea and Dike, I ask that you...accept this innocent soul as a willing sacrifice, so that you may see our dedication to the justice we wish to seek."

His hands shake so badly he almost drops the knife in his grip. Lydia puts her hand on top of his, guiding it towards her throat. ' _It's okay_ ,' she mouths to him. Her eyes close; she tips her head up to face the eclipse, and _screams_. The entire world seems to shake with the force of it.

A sob tears itself from his throat as he feels flesh give way to metal, feels the hot flow of blood on his fingers. He has to clench his teeth hard to stop himself from screaming, too.

He catches her as she falls, lifeless, onto the tree stump beneath, her blood mingling with Deaton's. He knows that for maximum power he should inflict the threefold death on her, too, but he just - he _can't_.

Instead he cradles Lydia's body, hands curled in hers. He sits with her on the nemeton as her gasps fade from his ears and her body goes still beneath his arms.

" _With these words, heed my call!_ "

The sky is dark with the eclipse overhead, and for a moment everything is utterly silent and still; Stiles' heart begins to sink, anger and fury and grief ten months overdue beginning to well up inside him.

Then thunder crashes above, so loud it seems to him as if the sky must be splitting in two; a flash of lightning, so bright it burns, strikes the nemeton and everything on it.

Then darkness.

* * *

He wakes with a cry, a smothering weight pressing down on him. He struggles desperately against it, until suddenly whatever he was lying in gives way to empty air and he falls to the floor.

It's dark, he discovers, when he finally manages to emerge from the tangled heap he landed in, but there's just enough light from the moon outside the window for Stiles to realise that he's in his old bedroom. He hasn't been back to the house in a long time - not since his dad died - but he still knows it like the back of his hand, and there's something definitively wrong with it.

Lydia and he had an extensively detailed plan. Before he lost his phone in the depths of the Amazon rain-forest, they were in contact every day - when Lydia wasn't comatose - checking up on each other, as well as going over the ingredients and instructions and everything that could possibly go wrong.

They had planned exactly when he would go back to, as well: September fourteenth 2011, the night before he, Scott and Allison sacrificed themselves to the nemeton. Since Stiles is already connected to the tree, he could lead them to it without freeing the nogitsune or relighting the beacon within, thus saving Allison and countless other people. Any earlier in the timeline and he might accidentally do something irreparably stupid, like stop Scott from being bitten.

As he looks around his room, he's about ninety percent sure he's gone too far. There's no strings or boards on the walls, to begin with - and he knows for a fact he took his _Pokémon_ poster down when he was twelve.

He looks down at his body. His legs are far too short, his hands too small and too close to his face. He reaches his hands up to his hair: it's long, sticking out in random directions from his head.

He started shaving it after his mom died.

There's a stunned gasp from behind him, and Stiles turns around so fast he almost gives himself whiplash. He's already standing, ready for a fight, but what he sees makes his jaw drop and his hands fall limply at his sides as he stares unashamedly.

There is a ghost in his room.

Her form is devoid of colour, grey and translucent - he can see his bedroom door through her body. She floats a couple of inches off the carpet, and as he watches she glances down, then lowers until her feet rest against the ground. Her eyes are wide and shocked, mouth hanging open just as much as his is, because of all the possibilities and outcomes they cycled through, this never even occurred to them.

The ghost in his bedroom is Lydia Martin, and through her head he can see the calendar on the door, telling him exactly how badly they fucked up.

"What the hell did you _do_ , Stiles?"

* * *

 **I really don't like Deaton.**

 **For anyone who doesn't know, an athame is a knife used in magick rituals. A wolf moon is the January moon, and a hunter's moon is in October.**

 **Come hang with/talk with/prompt me on tumblr: edelwoodsouls - I'm always free to chat :)**


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